Then the three generals of the United States army descended in a body—­or in three bodies; and the truth is that their three bodies scarce held them, they were in such a state of flesh when they reached Kentucky, and of being perpetually overfed while they remained.  The object of their joint visit under a recent act of Congress was to locate a military asylum for disabled soldiers; and had they stayed much longer they must have had themselves admitted to their own institution as foremost of the disabled.  Having spent some time at the Lower Blue Lick Springs, the proposed site—­where this summer are over five hundred guests of our finest Southern society—­they afterwards were drawn around with immense solidity towards Louisville, Frankfort, Maysville, Paris, and Lexington, being everywhere received with such honors and provisions that these great guns were in danger of becoming spiked forever in both barrel and tube.

Upon reaching this town one of them detached himself from the heated rolling mass and accepted the invitation of young Cobb—­who had formed the acquaintance at West Point—­to make a visit in his home.  He had not been there many days before he manoeuvred to establish a private military retreat for himself in the affections of Mrs. Cobb.  So that his presence became a profanation to Georgiana, whose reverence for her heroic father burns like an altar of sacred fire, and whose nature became rent in twain between her mother’s suitor and her brother’s guest.

A most pestiferous variety of caterpillar has infested the tops of my cherry-trees this summer, and during the general’s encampment near Mrs. Cobb I happened several times to be mounted on my step-ladder, busy with my pruning-shears, when he was decoying her around her garden—­just over the fence—­buckled in to suffocation, and with his long epaulettes golden in the sun like tassels of the corn.  I was engaged in exterminating this insect on the last day of his sojourn.  They were passing almost beneath me on the other side; he had been talking; I heard her brief reply, in a voice low and full of dignity,

“I have been married, sir!”

“Mother of Georgiana!” I cried, within myself.  But had she ever thought of taking a second husband she must have seen through “Old Drumbeater,” as Sylvia called him.  There were times when their breakfast would be late—­for the sake of letting his chicken be broiled in slow perfection or his rolls or waffles come to a faultless brown; and I, being at work near the garden fence, would hear him tramping up and down the walk on the other side and swearing at a family that had such irregular meals.  The camel, a lean beast, requires an extraordinary supply of food, which it proceeds to store away in its hump as nourishment to be drawn upon while it is crossing the desert.  There may be no long campaigning before the general; but if there were and rations were short, why could he not live upon his own back?  It is of a thickness, a roundness, and an impenetrability that would have justified Jackson in using him as a cotton-bale at the battle of New Orleans.